61 












LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

CIiap.._____ _. C( it No. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ! 



EL-SHADAI 



OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH 



AND THE 



CALL TO PRAYER 



♦ ♦ ♦ 



I 



BY EEV. A 1 . B. SIMPSON 



♦ ♦ ♦ 




PUBLISHED BY 
THE CHRISTIAN ALLIANCE PUB. CO., 

SOUTH NYACK, K.^Q £$?]£$ RECEIVED 






Tat tMM®f 



Copyright 1897 by 
A. B. Simpson. 



EL SHADAI, OE THE GOD WHO IS 
ENOUGH. 

I am the Almighty God. Walk before Me and be 
thou perfect. Gen. xvii. 1. 

There are epochs in every great life, and per- 
haps this day marks an epoch in many of our 
lives. The text marks such an epoch in Abra- 
ham's life. Several similar crisis hours had al- 
ready come in the history of the patriarch. 
The first was when he left his native land at 
God's bidding. The second was when he en- 
tered Canaan and found it a famine-stricken 
land of foes. The third was when he separated 
from Lot and God appeared to him and gave 
him the promise of all that he had left and 
much more besides. The fourth was when God 
gave him the promise of a son, perhaps fifteen 
or twenty years before the present epoch. That 
promise was accompanied with a very wonderful 
revelation of God and a covenant covering all 



6 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

the future and foreshadowing the blessing of 
coming ages. 

But Abraham had not been altogether true to 
the high calling which God had given him. 
He had not doubted God's promise and yet he 
had staggered under its weight enough to unite 
with Sarah his wife some fourteen years before 
the present incident in helping God to fulfill 
His promise by taking into his family Hagar, 
their servant, and striving through her to bring 
about the fulfillment of the promise of a son 
in the person of Ishmael. In all this God had 
seen the wavering of a double mind, and now 
when He appears to Abraham in his hundredth 
year He very obviously alludes to Abraham's 
doubtful attitude by the startling message 
which is as much a reproof as it is a promise, "I 
am El-Shadai. Walk before Me and be thou 
perfect/' 

He had not been quite upright in his faith 
because he had not quite believed in the all- 
sufficiency of his God, and therefore it was 
necessary that God should come to him in a 
new revelation of His power and require from 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 7 

Abraham a new expression of his faith. It may 
be that this is just where some of us are standing 
today. We have been trusting God in part and 
have been trying to do the other part ourselves, 
and God is speaking to us by His new and al- 
mighty name and saying to us "I am El-Shadai. 
Walk before Me and be thou perfect." 

I. A NEW BEVELATION OE GOD. 

Every advance step in our spiritual life must 
spring from a new view of God. It was the 
vision of God that sent Abraham forth on his 
new career of faith, and it was a new revelation 
of God that led him to further advances in the 
successive steps of his life of faith. It was the 
revelation of God to Jacob, first at Bethel and 
next at Peniel, that led to the great crisis of his 
life. It was rt revelation of God that sent Moses 
forth to deliver Israel. It was a similar revela- 
tion that made Joshua the conqueror of Canaan. 
The vision of God brought healing and new life 
to Job and called Isaiah to his great prophetic 
mission; and it is such a vision of God that 
alone can meet the needs of our hearts and 
inspire our souls to our heavenly calling. It is 



8 EL-SHADAI, OB THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

God we need to see and it is God in this mighty 
character as El-Shadai, the All-sufficient One. 

THE GOD OP THE SUPERNATURAL. 

This name stands for the Almightiness of 
God. We might translate it to mean the God 
of the supernatural. Men are trying to get the 
supernatural out of the Bible and explain it all 
on rationalistic principles. The devil is en- 
gaged on a parallel line to get the supernatural 
out of Christian life and to bring religion down 
to a mere matter of ethics, morals and humani- 
tarian improvement. The very essence of 
Christianity is that it is the revelation, worship 
and fellowship of a supernatural Being and it is 
all Divine from the first to the last century. 
God's great object is to make Himself known to 
us and then to work out His almightiness in us. 
Every situation into which He brings us is just 
a frame in which to set His promises and a 
mould in which to cast some new manifestation 
of His all-sufficiency The very difficulties that 
surround our lives today are but opportunities 
for God to show Himself to us as El-Shadai. 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 9 

WHAT THIS MEANS. 

This does not merely mean that He is al- 
mighty in the abstract and that He has the at- 
tribute of Omnipotence. All will concede this 
in a general way, for if God be God at all He 
must be omnipotent. But many of ns hedge 
Him around with such limitations, laws and 
modes of operation as to practically tie His 
hands and make it impracticable for Him to do 
any real supernatural thing in our lives. To 
really believe in the all-sufficiency of God 
means that He is actually at liberty to do for us 
all that we need a God for, and that we have a 
right to take Him for everything for which we 
are unequal and insufficient. It means that 
He has promised all things necessary for life 
and godliness, that He has provided all things 
and that we have a right to come to Him for all 
things, presenting without question the mighty 
check on the bank of heaven, "My God shall 
supply all your need according to His riches in 
glory by Christ Jesus." 

ABLE TO SAVE. 

It means, in the first place, that we have 



10 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

a God that is equal to our salvation and the sal- 
vation of any sinner, however lost and however 
long resisting the mercy and grace of God. It 
means that He is equal to the salvation of your 
boy, your friend, your soul, whoever you are 
and whatever you may be. It means that He is 
equal to your sanctification and the sanctifica- 
tion of any temperament, no matter how im- 
practicable; the counteracting of any habit, no 
matter how confirmed; the overcoming of any 
defect, infirmity and sin, no matter how deeply 
rooted and aggravated; victory over any and 
every temptation that may come, and a life 
sanctified through and through and preserved 
blameless unto the coming of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. It means that He "is able to keep you 
from stumbling and present you faultless before 
the presence of His glory with exceeding joy." 

ABLE TO HEAL. 

It means that He is equal to your physical 
need and has made provision for your sickness as 
well as your sins, your infirmities of body as 
well as your infirmities of temper and the sup- 



EL-SHAD AI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 11 

ply of all needed strength, health and help 
until your life work is done. It means that He 
is equal to your circumstances, that He can sus- 
tain you, comfort you and keep you under all 
possible unfavorable conditions, making you 
happy when everything around you is uncon- 
genial, using and blessing you when everything 
seems to conflict and hinder, and then trans- 
forming circumstances, turning the curse into 
a blessing and bringing up the fir tree and the 
myrtle instead of the thistle and the thorn. 

It means that He is equal to your work, no 
matter what the difficulties and obstructions 
may be, that He can overcome the antag- 
onism of China, the caste of India, the barbar- 
ism of Africa, and even the lethargy and selfish- 
ness of the church itself, and can carry on and 
complete His glorious work in spite of the self- 
ishness of man, the hate of Satan and the faith- 
lessness even of His own followers. As old 
Matthew Henry quaintly expresses it "El-Shadai 
just means the God that is enough." 

"Enough for you, enough for me, 
Enough for all forever." 



12 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 
II. A NEW EXEKCISE OF EAITH. 

It is not enough to have an almighty God, 
but we must be able to respond to His promise 
and appropriate His almightiness. There must 
be in us a corresponding faculty of faith which 
first comprehends and then appropriates and 
proves in action the reality of all His power and 
promise. In Eden man lost this power and got 
away from the sphere of God's supreme attrac- 
tion, and since then has been like a wandering 
star out of its orbit, off from its centre and 
plunging into the blackness of darkness for- 
ever. Faith is the law of spiritual gravitation 
which brings man back to God and swings his 
life into the orbit of trust, fellowship and obedi- 
ence. 

In this Abraham is our great forerunner, and 
our part is to follow in the steps of our father 
Abraham, and as we follow we shall find that all 
his steps were steps of faith. But Abraham's 
faith was not as yet perfected, and God had now 
to give him a startling object lesson of what it 
really means to believe God. And so He does 
much more than talk to Abraham. He requires 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 13 

Abraham to meet Him and answer back by the 
actions of responsive faith. And so we see in 
the following verses the most dramatic picture 
of the steps of faith to be found in the Bible. 

THREE TENSES OF FAITH. 

First — God gives Abraham the promise of 
future blessing. "I will make My covenant 
between thee and Me." Abraham meets this 
promise and goes down upon his face before 
God to claim it. Then follows secondly the 
next tense of faith, which is the present tense. 
"As for Me behold My covenant is with thee." 
The thing that God would do He now does. 
The thing that Abraham expected he now ac- 
cepts and takes as a present fact. The future 
becomes the present tense and faith becomes ac- 
tion. But there is still a third tense and a 
third step of faith. "Neither shall thy name 
any more be called Abram, for thy name shall 
be Abraham for a father of many nations have 
I made thee." It is now the perfect tense. 
The thing that was promised was done and is 
now finished. Action has become transaction 



14 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

and has passed even beyond the present tense, 
and therefore Abraham must take the position 
of one who has passed through all these stages 
and has actually received his yet unseen bless- 
ing. He must change his name and stand be- 
fore the public and be laughed at and called a 
fool, an old man in his dotage, a dreamer; as his 
neighbors ask him the reason of the strange 
difference in his name, and he tells them that 
God has made him the father of many nations. 
Faith must be sealed by testimony and testi- 
mony must be steeped in trial, shame and many 
a waiting hour of trusting in the dark. 

But at length there comes the day of vindi- 
cation, when the laugh is turned upon them 
and little Isaac is called the name of "Laughter" 
because God has made him to laugh instead of 
them in the glorious vindication of His believ- 
ing child. 

RECKON ON GOD. 

This, beloved, is the way in which we must 
meet El-Shaclai. We must not only take the 
promise for the future, but we must bring it in- 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 15 

to the present and claim it as an immediate 
fact in this moment of our lives. Then we 
must translate it into the past and take the 
position that it is an accomplished fact and call 
it so, nor be ashamed to have men know that we 
believe our God and venture on even calling the 
things that are not as though they were. This 
is the committal of faith. This is the place 
where so many fail to enter in, but this is the 
very ladder of blessing described in the thirty- 
seventh Psalm, where David says, "Commit thy 
way unto the Lord, trust also in Him and He 
worketh. Eest in the Lord, be silent to God 
and wait patientiy for Him and He shall bring 
forth thy righteousness as the light and thy 
judgments as the noon day." 

Do we want salvation? First, there is 
the promise "Him that cometh unto Me I will 
not cast out." There must come a moment 
when that promise is brought into the present 
and faith must say, "He does not cast out, He 
does receive." And then faith must take one 
step further and add "He has accepted. I am 
saved," and accept the new name of child and 



16 EL-SHADAI, OE THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

call Him Abba, Father Then it is that the 
Spirit witnesses to the soul and the glorious 
reality pours into our conscious life. 

THE WAY TO EECEIVE HIM. 

Is it sanctification and the indwelling of the 
Holy Ghost that we seek? We must take the 
same three steps of faith, He will, He does, He 
has given the Holy Ghost. I am His and He is 
mine and Christ is within me the Hope of glory. 

A TEANSACTION. 

Is it healing we seek? We shall pray in vain 
and in vain expect the promise to be fulfilled 
until we accept the promise as fulfilled and pro- 
nounce the word of accomplished faith and 
pass into a Divine transaction. And so with 
every blessing that we may need and every 
promise that we may claim, each of them must 
be passed through these stages of promise, the 
appropriation and the acknowledgement of testi- 
mony and praise, and then the great wheels of 
God's mighty co-operation will begin to revolve, 
and the glorious results of faith will pass into 
living realities in your life. 



EL-SHADAI, OB THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 17 

HE STAGGEKED NOT. 

Abraham successfully passed through this 
crisis place, and henceforth we see him walking 
before El-Shadai upright, perfect, unwavering 
and triumphant. If we turn to the fourth chap- 
ter of the epistle to the Komans, we shall find 
a magnificent picture of the new Abraham after 
he met El-Shadai. We are told that his faith 
was so strong that against hope he believed in 
hope. We are told that he could look at his 
own body and consider it as good as dead with- 
out being discouraged, because he was not look- 
ing at himself, but at the Almighty One that 
could quicken his body and make it equal to the 
fulfillment of the promise, and in spite of Sara's 
age and inability could supernaturally work 
through her for the accomplishment of His will. 
We are told that "he staggered not at the prom- 
ise through unbelief." He did not walk with 
a wobbling or unsteady gait, but stood straight 
up unbending beneath his mighty load of bless- 
ing, and instead of growing weak he waxed 
strong in the faith, growing more robust the 
more the difficulties became apparent, glorify- 



18 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

ing God through his very insufficiency and be- 
ing "fully persuaded," as the Greek expresses, 
"that He who had promised was" (not "able," 
as our version has it, but, as it literally means) 
"abundantly able," munificently able, able with 
an infinite surplus of resources, infinitely able, 
"to perform." He recognized it as an easy 
thing for God to do all this, and for this God 
was glorified, pleased, delighted, and He holds 
him forth as an eternal example of the faith He 
expects from us in the later days of the Chris- 
tian dispensation and in the age of a risen and 
ascended Christ and a present Holy Ghost. 

The best application that I know how to 
make of this sublime message of God is the 
passage quoted above in the third chapter of 
Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, "Now unto Him 
that is able to do exceeding abundantly above 
all we ask or think. 

EXCEEDING ABUNDANTLY. 

1. It tells us that He is able exceeding abund- 
antly. He is the God of boundless resources. 
The resurrection and ascension of Christ is for- 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 19 

ever the pattern of what we may expect Him to 
do for us. 

2. The only limit is in us. Our asking, our 
thinking our ideas are too low, our prayers are 
too small, our expectations are too limited. The 
Greek is very strong — "far beyond all that we 
ask or think." He is trying to lift us up to a 
higher conception and lure us on to a mightier 
expectation and appropriation. Oh, shall we 
put Him in derision! 

3. There is but one measure here given for 
His blessing, and that is "according to the pow- 
er that worketh in us." God will do for us 
just as much as we will let Him work in us. 
His temporal provisions will be commensurate 
with our spiritual experience. As much as we 
know Him in our hearts we may know Him in 
our lives and circumstances. As much as He 
works in us He will work for us. As much as 
He prays in us He will make real in His glori- 
ous answering providences. 

4. The sphere of His mighty working is in 
the church. It is through His work, His word, 
the building up of His kingdom, that we are to 



20 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

experience the glorious riches of His power. 
He will not give it to ns for selfish or worldly 
needs, but He will use it for the building up of 
His church and the bringing in of His king- 
dom. He is head over all things for His body, 
the church. All that He is and all that He has 
over yonder is for the completion of the 
church, the preparation of the bride and the 
evangelization of the world. There is no limit 
to what we may ask and expect of our glorious 
El-shadai 

5. But to Him must be the glory. All this 
must be in the spirit of self-abnegation, and 
Christ alone must be exalted. The way to glori- 
fy Him is to take much from Him and let Him 
do much for us. 

6. There is one more suggestion in this sub- 
lime passage, "throughout all ages, world with- 
out end." Literally, it means through the gen- 
eration of the age of ages. In the apostle's 
mind time and eternity consists of generations 
and ages unfolding forever. We are living in 
one of those generations. This is the genera- 
tion in which He wants to work for us as He 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 21 

never worked before. Oh, that He may give us 
grace to be men for our generation, to under- 
stand the sublime significance of this last age of 
the Christian dispensation and to make our 
generation one that shall shine among the roll- 
ing ages of the coming aeons as the sublimest 
exhibition of the power of the glory of our 
King amid all the ages that have been and that 
through it and through us He may yet make 
known to the principalities and powers in the 
heavenly places in the ages to come the mani- 
fold wisdom of God. 



*. 



A CALL TO PRAYER 

" Thus saith the Lord, the Maker of it, who formed it 
to establish it. The Lord is His name. Call unto me 
and I will answer thee, and show the great and mighty 
things which thou knowest not." Jer. 33 : 2, 3. 

By His great and mighty name, Jehovah, and 
by His power to make the thing He promises, 
and to establish the promise He pledges. Je- 
hovah summons us to call upon Him for great 
and mighty things. He longs to show us His 
all sufficiency, and He invites us to claim it. 

A NEW NAME. 

He adds a new name here — Jehovah. It is 
His covenant name. It is the God of love, as 
well as all sufficiency. Let us hear and an- 
swer His gracious and mighty call. 

FOE THE SINNEK. 

1. A call to the sinner. "What meanest 



EL-SHAD AI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 23 

thou, oh, sleeper, arise, call upon thy God." 
Jonah i. 6. This may be His call to thee, dear 
friend, as yon read these lines, sleeping in sor- 
row or sunk in spiritual insensibility. God sum- 
mons you to your knees. The very trial that 
has come upon you in His loving discipline, 
and He is bidding you seek His face and turn 
to His mercy before some greater calamity shall 
make it too late to pray. In the very same book 
we read, two chapters after, of how the voice of 
prayer stayed the hand of judgment and saved 
the whole city of Mnevah from destruction: 
"Let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, 
and cry mightily unto God," was the mon- 
arch's proclamation, "Yea, let thou turn every 
one from his evil way, and from the violence 
that is in their hands. And God saw their 
works that they turned from their evil way; and 
God repented of the evil that He had said He 
would do unto them; and He did it not." 

FOE THE TKOUBLED SAINT. 

2. A call to the Christian in trouble. "Call 
on Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver 
thee, and thou shalt glorify Me." Psalm 1. 15. 



24 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

It was a day of trouble with Jacob. His cal- 
amities had culminated in the final crisis and 
his resources and subterfuges had failed at 
last, and there alone at Peniel he called upon 
his God in the day of his trouble, and when 
the morning dawned the weak supplanting 
Jacob had become the prince of Israel, and the 
trouble had vanished away. This is the record 
that a later prophet has given of his wonder- 
ful victory of prayer: "By His strength he had 
power with God. Yea, he had power with the 
angel and prevailed. He wept and made sup- 
plication unto him. He found him in Bethel 
and there he spoke with us. Even the Lord 
God of Hosts, the Lord is his memorial. There- 
fore, tjirn thou to thy God; keep mercy and 
judgment, and wait on thy God continually." 

THE PERPLEXED WOKKER. 

3. A call to the perplexed Christian worker. 
What a fine example we have of this in the 
story of Ezra. Ezra viii. 21. The brave and 
loyal leader of Israel's returning captives found 
himself in the lone wilderness, surrounded with 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 25 

enemies and helpless and defenceless against 
his foes. This is the story of his deliverance: 
"Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river 
Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before 
our God, to seek of Him a right way for us, and 
for our little ones, and for all our substance. 
For I was ashamed to require of the king a 
band of soldiers and horsemen to help us 
against the enemy in the way; because we had 
spoken unto the king, saying, The hand of our 
God is upon them all for good that seek Him; 
but His power and His wrath is against all 
them that forsake Him. So we fasted and be- 
sought our God for this; and He was entreated 
of us." 

Beloved, are you oppressed, assailed, per- 
plexed and friendless? Call upon God. "Cast 
they burden upon the Lord, and He will sus- 
tain thee." "Commit thy way unto the Lord, 
trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to 
pass." 

THE TRIED MINISTER. 

4. A call to the minister of Christ amid his 
difficulties and adversaries. So we find Paul 



26 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

calling upon his brethren to pray for him in a 
difficult crisis of his work. II. Thes. iii. 1. 
"Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the Word 
of God may have free course, and be glorified, 
even as it is with you; and that we may be de- 
livered from unreasonable and wicked men; for 
all men have not faith." His work was greatly 
hindered at Corinth by the oppositions and in- 
trigues of the Jews. And so he sent this peti- 
tion to his friends in Thessalonica. The answer 
to this prayer is given to us in the eighteenth 
chapter of Acts. 

HOW IT WAS ANSWERED. 

First, it came in a baptism of courage and 
faith to Paul himself. We read that he was 
"pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews 
that Jesus was Christ. And when they opposed 
themselves and blasphemed, he shook his raim- 
ent, and said unto them, Your blood be upon 
your own heads, I am clean. From henceforth 
I will go unto the Gentiles." 

AN OPEN DOOR. 

Next, it came in a wonderful opening of 
the door among the Gentiles. Justus opened 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 27 

his door for the work, and so great was the 
work that even Crispus, the chief ruler of the 
synagogue, himself believed, and great numbers 
of the people turned to God. 

A MESSAGE OF GOD. 

Next, it came in a message from God to Paul 
m a night vision, "Be not afraid but speak, 
and hold not thy peace; for I am with thee, 
and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee; for 
I have much people in this city." 

PAUL'S VINDICATION. 

Finally, it came in a complete vindication of 
the apostle before his enemies by the direct 
hand of God. The Jews, exasperated with him, 
and led by Sosthenes, their ruler, had him ar- 
rested and brought before Gallio, the new Ko- 
man governor, under charge of false teaching. 
But Gallio dismissed their complaint with 
scorn and drove them from the judgment seat 
before Paul had need to answer a word on his 
own behalf; and, to complete the triumph, the 
mob, as soon as they found the case had gone 
against the Jews, turned upon them and beat 
Sosthenes, their leader, mercilessly. And per- 



28 EL-SHADAI, OE THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

haps to crown the series of wonderful answers 
to the apostle's request for prayer, this very 
Sosthenes seems to be joined with Paul him- 
self as co-writer of a letter he afterwards sent 
to these very Corinthians (see 1 Cor. 1. 1), 
where he is called "Sosthenes the brother/' that 
is, your brother as well as mine. Surely this 
was a glorious revenge of love, and one of the 
great and mighty things which God will do 
for those who call upon Him. 

THE WATCHER EOR HIS COMING. 

5. A call to the watcher on the heights of 
faith and hope, as we look for the Lord's re- 
turning. In the ninth chapter of the book of 
Daniel we read this remarkable statement: "In 
the first year of the reign of Darius I, Daniel, 
understood by books the numbers of the years, 
whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, 
the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy 
years in the desolations of Jerusalem. And I 
set my face unto the Lord God to seek by 
prayer and supplication, with fasting, and sack- 
cloth, and ashes." Now, the remarkable part 
of this prayer is that it was offered to God at 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 29 

the very time when the answer was already 
promised and expected. It was just because 
Daniel found the prophecy of Jeremiah that the 
captivity of Judah should end after seventy 
years, and had also observed that the seventy 
years were about expired — it was for this rea- 
son that he set himself apart to a special sea- 
son of fasting and prayer, to claim from God 
the very thing that had been promised. One 
might have been tempted to think that the 
promise of God would take care of itself, and 
the prophecy be fulfilled anyhow; but just be- 
cause of the promise and the prophecy Daniel 
was encouraged — nay, constrained, to pray and 
thus co-operate with God in the fulfillment of 
His own promise. 

This is the deep philosophy of prayer. It is 
part of God's own machinery for accomplishing 
His own purposes. It constitutes the connect- 
ing pipes between the great reservoir on high 
and the lamps that burn in the darkness below. 
Zechariah has given us an exquisite picture in 
his fine symbolism of the seven-fold candlestick 
with the bowl at the top, and the golden pipes 



30 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

that led from it to the various lamps and kept 
the light ever burning. Prayer constitutes 
these golden pipes, and carries the blessing, 
which God is bestowing, into the receptacles of 
grace through which it is given, and by means 
of which it operates in the economy of the 
church; and therefore the ministry of prayer 
is as necessary as the promises and providence 
of God. Both are equally Divine. 

THE TIME TO PRAY. 

The time to pray, therefore, is just the time 
when God has promised, and when God is work- 
ing Himself to fulfill the promise. Instead of 
folding our arms and lying back in easy^com- 
placency faith should prostrate herself at the 
very moment that she hears the sound of a 
going in the top of the mulberry trees, and 
step forth with a more confident and victorious 
march because God Himself has already gone 
out before her. 

PRAY FOR HIS COMING. 

Now, beloved, we have come in the course 
of time to just such a crisis in the end of the 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 31 

age. All of the. prophecies of the Holy Scrip- 
ture point with increasing distinctness to the 
days in which we live, as the time when the 
greatest events which prophecy has foreshad- 
owed are to come to pass and the world's crisis 
is to be reached. Of that day and that hour 
knoweth no man; but at the ^ame time the 
children of God are not left in darkness that 
that day should overtake them as a thief. 
While absolute and definite dates are denied, 
yet approximate signs are made very plain. 
Therefore, there can be no doubt that the com- 
bined sentiment of the most spiritual interpre- 
ters of prophetic truth is looking for the re- 
turn of our Lord very soon. This very fact 
should lead us to pray as we have never prayed 
before. It is a loud call to wait upon God, and 
plead with faith and intense earnestness for the 
very things that He Himself has promised — 
the removing of obstacles, the preparation of 
the church, the evangelization of the world, 
and the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

FOE THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION. 

When He comes again He is to be given to 



32 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

the desire, to the longing, to the prayer, and 
to the expectant faith of His waiting people. 
It is the last prayer of the Holy Ghost in the 
Scriptures of the New Testament. Let us take 
it up and send its united echo to the throne: 
"Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." 

6. This is a call to the hearts that are long- 
ing for the evangelization of the world. "Pray 
ye the Lord of the harvest, that He would send 
forth laborers into His harvest. This remark- 
able command of the Lord Jesus was twice 
spoken during His earthly ministry. Once 
He uttered it when looking out upon the mul- 
titudes as they stood on the hillsides of Galilee, 
and His heart was moved with compassion be- 
cause they seemed to Him like scattered sheep 
without a shepherd, and turning to His dis- 
ciples, He said: "The harvest truly is great, 
but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the 
Lord of the harvest that He would send forth 
laborers into His harvest." A second time He 
used the same words when sending out the 
seventy disciples into every city and village 
whither He Himself would come. It seemed 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 33 

like a kind of foreshadowing of the Gospel 
movement that is to precede His personal re- 
turn in the sending forth of laborers, which we 
are now witnessing. He felt far more intensely 
than we can feel, but what we do ourselves 
often feel, how vast is the need, how inadequate 
the supply in the great harvest field of the 
world. 

THE HARVEST GREAT. 

Looking out over a thousand millions 
without the Gospel, we are overwhelmed 
with the immensity of the work. Looking 
over the colossal difficulties of African slavery 
and savagery, Hindu caste, Chinese prejudice 
and hate, Mohammedan fanaticism, and Eoman 
Catholic delusion, our Master's words come 
back to us with awful pathos: "The harvest 
truly is great." 

THE LABORERS FEW. 

Then when we look out upon the other pic- 
ture, the worldliness, the selfishness, the self- 
indulgence and the indifference of the church 
of Christ, the millions that are wasted in pleas- 
ure, and for gain in contrast with the pittances 



34 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

given for the mission field, and the little com- 
panies of scattered missionaries stretched in 
thin and broken lines across the vast areas of 
heathen darkness, with one missionary to every 
quarter of a million in the average of the heath- 
en world, and in many a neglected field but one 
missionary for many millions, our hearts echo 
back with tears the sorrowful cry: "but the lab- 
orers are few." And as we toil on, year after 
year, endeavoring to arouse the church at home 
and reach the need abroad, and the colossal 
mountains of difficulty still rise up, our hearts 
cry out, Who is sufficient for these things? 
Lord, we are inadequate, our work seems but 
trifling, our resources utterly out of proportion 
to the great undertaking, and the results seem 
but little more than a few scattered rays like 
dim candle light in the thick darkness of a 
mighty midnight." It is then we fall back 
from our despair to the footstool of prayer, and 
cry, "Lord, we are insufficient, Thou must un- 
dertake." And we hear the Master Himself 
say, "Pray, pray, pray ye the Lord of the harv- 
est that He will send forth laborers into His 
harvest." 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 35 

Thank God it is His harvest and He is its 
Lord. He is equal to it; but we must claim 
His working, and pray for His interposing 
hand. 

NEED OP A NEW MOVEMENT. 

But the language expresses more than ap- 
pears upon the surface. It is not merely a 
general prayer, that is here intended, for God 
to help and work along lines in which He has 
been working so long; but is is a most emphatic 
and intense call to a very unusual prayer for 
a very extraordinary missionary movement. 
The word "send" literally means "thrust/' or 
"thrust forth." It describes a violent, ener- 
getic, sudden and a most powerful movement, 
a breaking forth through all barriers that 
cleaves its deep channels in a mighty torrent 
of resistless power. It is the picture of a 
mountain stream bursting forth from its icy 
fetters and its rocky barriers and sweeping 
through the plain — an overflowing river of 
boundless fullness and strength. Hitherto it 
has been a little trickling brooklet in the moun- 
tain, but now it breaks from its barriers and 



86 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

cleaves its deep channels through the rocks, 
and sweeps to the sea — a resistless torrent. 

A GREATER CRUSADE. 

This is the great movement for which we are 
to pray. This is the revival of missions which 
the world needs today. All that we have asked 
or expected has been but a trickling mountain 
rivulet. Let our faith take hold of something 
higher. Let us ask God that He will thrust 
forth laborers into His harvest; that He will 
rend asunder and melt away the barriers of 
selfishness, worldliness, indifference, ignor- 
ance and ungodliness; that He will set free the 
millions which His church is hoarding up or 
wasting, that He will unloose the thousands of 
young men who are held at home by their am- 
bition or their lack of consecration; that He 
will turn into the channels of Christian bene- 
ficence the millions and billions which Chris- 
tian men today are expending with such gigan- 
tic enterprise in the investments of trade 
and the risks of speculation, and that He 
will lead His people to understand the grand- 
eur of their calling and the immensity of the 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 37 

issues involved in the evangelization of the 
world and the coming of Christ. 

MILLIONS FOE MISSIONS. 

It means that the day shall come when our 
millionaires will give to the evangelization of 
a continent what they are now giving to the 
spanning of a continent with a new railway. 
It means that the day will not be far distant 
when companies of the redeemed, consecrated 
young men and women will pour out, for the 
bringing back of Christ our King, the millions 
that they now spend in a single political cam- 
paign to elect a favorite leader, or to defeat 
some political conspiracy of reckless and un- 
principled gain. 

A CHURCH IN EARNEST. 

Oh, if men could but believe in the coming 
of Jesus, the value of souls, the great thoughts 
and plans of God, as they believe in their poli- 
tical platforms, their commercial investments 
and their personal ambitions, the oldest of us 
might live to see this prayer fulfilled, and such 
a thrusting forth of laborers into the harvest 
of the world as would change the little rill of 



38 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

our missionary achievements into a mighty 
river of salvation, sweeping in a single genera- 
tion over all the globe. 

PRAY, PRAY, PRAY. 

Beloved, this is what the world needs. This 
is what the church needs. This is what the 
age needs. This is what heathendom needs. 
We cannot bring it about. We have not ac- 
complished it; but God is able. Oh, let us be- 
lieve, let us conceive, let us burn with intense 
desire, and we shall see the great and mighty 
things which prayer has brought already, and 
which it will yet bring to pass in the closing- 
days of the Christian dispensation. In the 
words of Pastor Gossner: 

gossner's cry. 

"Believe, hope, love, pray, burn, waken the 
dead! Hold fast by prayer; wrestle like Jacob! 
Up, up, my brethren! The Lord is coming; 
and to every one He will say: 6 Where hast 
thou left the souls of these heathen? With 
the devil V 0, swiftly seek these souls, and en- 
ter not without them into the possesion of the 
Lord." 



EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 39 

GREAT AND MIGHTY THINGS. 

7. The call to those who are looking for the 
manifestation of God in His supernatural power 
and presence. And so we close with our text: 
"Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and 
show thee great and mighty things, which thou 
knowest not." The greatest need of the world 
is the revelation of God Himself, and the belief 
in His supernatural reality and power. Man 
has grown so wise and great that he has no room 
for God, and God's great purpose is to manifest 
Himself as the real, as the Almighty and as the 
Supreme. 

CHRISTIANITY IS EVERYTHING. 

Christianity is nothing if it is not every- 
thing. Christianity is nothing if it be not 
altogether supernatural. The great lack of 
Christianity today is the absence of the super- 
natural working of God. It is being reduced 
to science. It is being taught as a system, and 
it is being pressed as a ceremony and a form 
of religious culture. The hearts of many are 
crying out for something Diviner, deeper and 
more intensely real, and God is waiting in 



40 EL-SHADAI, OR THE GOD WHO IS ENOUGH. 

these last days to show Himself the El-Shadai 
of Abraham, and the consuming fire of Pente- 
cost. 



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